


They put Us far apart

by middlemarch



Series: Season 3 That Never Was, Middlemarch Edition [2]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Angst, Conflict, Doctors & Physicians, Episode 2, F/M, Family Drama, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Historical Figures, I hope, Inheritance, Letters, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Romance, Season 3, Season 3 that never was, Secrets, Sick Character, Sisters, Substance Abuse, The Plot Thickens, Trauma, errand boy, hospital administration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-20 21:43:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13726566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: There had been fewer casualties over the past few weeks-- but there were still pitched battles. And unexpected allies.





	1. Chapter 1

She’d been sitting by the girl for a few hours now, the busy bustle of the day over and done; someone had given her a tin cup of soup and she’d drunk it down, not bothering to taste it. Earlier that morning, she’d had hope that Mamie’s determined temperament and her own diligent care might be enough, but now, she knew she was only sitting a deathbed vigil and none of the others disagreed, she could see it in every resigned expression. Each breath the girl took was more tortured and Charlotte could feel the Angel of Death hovering just beside her; she thought it might be a relief to the girl when He took her hand and drew her forward. She kept praying, a prayer that was made of words she could hardly mean and her hands holding Mamie’s, trying to will the girl to live. She’d undertaken hopeless tasks before and she would again; it wasn’t the hopelessness that counted, it was the attempt. She told herself that again and again, like the nuns with their rosaries.

“They said I’d find you here—Charlotte?” Samuel said, having approached quietly, taking in the tableau in an instant.

“I need a scalpel and a cannula, now!” he exclaimed, taking Mamie’s hand from hers and feeling for a pulse.

“What?”

“I know I left a set of instruments here, in the basin after I repaired old Lemuel’s belly. Where’d you put it?” 

“It’s over there, I cleaned them the way you told me,” Charlotte said as she moved swiftly to retrieve the kit. It was second-hand, clearly much used, but it had been given to Samuel by Dr. Foster, and included French instruments American surgical kits didn’t, the quality evident in the heft of the handles, the sharpness of the scoured blades. 

“Good,” Samuel said, taking it from her hand and then bending with the scalpel angled towards Mamie’s throat.

“Sweet Lord Jesus, what are you doing?” Charlotte cried as he cut Mamie’s throat.

“A tracheotomy, it’s a way to get air into her lungs. She can’t breathe, she’s choking to death from the diphtheria but this might,” he explained, the words quick as his hands, the knife sliding in and then a curious metal tube, a little mottled, tucked in the wound he’d made. “This might let her live. She can breathe now, more easily, and the membrane from the illness should break up soon. She couldn’t have coughed it up, she would have done it by now.”

They both watched Mamie for a few minutes, Samuel holding her wrist in his hand. He’d worked so efficiently and she was so weak, she’d hardly struggled against the procedure, but now it seemed she was a bit easier. Samuel leaned closer to listen at the end of the cannula, dabbing at the blood on the girl’s neck with the edge of the sheet.

“It’s working--we should put a dressing around it, so it doesn’t come loose,” he said.

“How can you tell so fast?” 

“I can hear her breath and look at her shoulders, she’s not retracting, that means, she’s not working so hard to get the air in. Her fever’s still up but she has a chance now. I’ll have to tell Dr. Foster that treatise he loaned me came in handy,” he explained.

“You saved her life,” Charlotte said. She’d seen him doctoring before, but it didn’t stop the feeling of wonder in her, at his skill and the gift he had for seeing a way forward when it seemed to everyone else there was no way out.

“Maybe. A little soon to say. It’s in God’s hands, isn’t it?” he replied with his usual humility but she made out the satisfaction in his tone, the pride in the work of his two hands.

“You didn’t come here for this, though. I can get someone else to sit with her a spell, if you wanted to talk,” she offered. The urgency of the moment had passed, leaving her fatigued, exhausted with it, but still conscious of her duty. And perhaps something more than that, when it came to Samuel.

“Nothing that can’t wait,” he said, diffident as he hadn’t been when he was operating.

“I’m sure Miz Leora won’t mind sitting with Mamie a while,” she said, gesturing to the older woman at the other end of the canvas-roofed ward, who walked over and took the seat Charlotte pointed to with an easy grace. 

“Won’t be too long, ma’am,” Charlotte said to the other woman.

“You and Dr. Sam take all the time you want. I’ll keep liftin’ this chile up to the Lord, he’s bound to ‘preciate a different voice by now,” Leora said, smiling at them beneficently.

It wasn’t a long walk to the school-room tent and it was empty as her own quarters were not; there were some young girls lately come from Savannah, two sisters and a third unrelated they’d found on their journey north, snug on pallets near her own. The camp was running out of space and she wasn’t sure what she would do in a week or so when there were no pallets left, not one inch of space left, not even scraps to feed them all, clothe them all. It was a worry she kept close, sure at least that no one could help her with it. 

“I must thank you, Samuel, for what you just did,” she began.

“You don’t have to thank me, Charlotte,” he said, with that slow smile that lit his face, no matter how late the hour, how exhausted he might otherwise be. She loved it about him, though she daren’t say it.

“Yes, I do. I’d given up, I didn’t even think to send anyone for you.”

“Well, if I do say so myself, me being here made a difference tonight,” he said.

“Of course,” she replied, a little confused at the repetition, distracted by the encroaching anxiety of the next day, of how to feed them all, and clothe them…

“That is, you told me I ought to go. And if I had, if I’d listened, there wouldn’t have been anyone to help you tonight. To help that girl,” he said, bold as he rarely was. He was leaning forward and she felt how he wanted her to lean right back in towards him, how he wanted to be praised and fussed over. It wasn’t so very much to want but it seemed more than she had to give.

“No, there wouldn’t. Still doesn’t change my opinion, that you’re wasting your chance,” she said, watching his face become still, shuttered.

“I just saved that girl’s life,” he said brusquely.

“Yes. You saved her. But how many more could you save if you were trained? If you could train others? Dr. Foster’s willing to speak for you, but there’s not many like him. If you were a doctor, you could train others, even if a medical school wouldn’t accept them because there was no white man to put them forward, you could teach them. How many lives would be saved then, Samuel Diggs? How many Mamies and Leoras…and Charlottes?” she retorted, not bothering to keep the frustration from her voice as she might with another, an intimacy she hardly thought he’d count.

“Charlotte! That’s not fair!” he exclaimed.

“Haven’t you learned yet it isn’t about fair? About deserving? Mary Foster’s a dear woman, a dear friend to me, but did she somehow deserve to have Jed Foster move heaven and earth to save her, running up to Boston, ready to break every law? More than Mamie, a sweet child who never did anyone any harm? Do those girls from Savannah deserve to wake hungry tomorrow, glad for a bowl of porridge Mary Foster’d throw to a pig? Oh, help me Jesus say some sense to this man, for I’ve just about run out of words,” Charlotte said, letting herself speak without measuring the weight of every syllable, the impact of every phrase. She felt the burden of caring for the people who’d escaped weighing on her, a weight she ought to bear gladly. She felt wild to have said it and relieved and shamed; she wished, just for a moment, that he’d say nothing in return but take her into his arms and pat her back, reassuring her without cause but with his whole heart. That she could lay her head down for once and truly rest.

“What do you need?” Samuel asked, startling her a little with his abrupt question, its lack of elaboration or soothing.

“What?”

“What do you need to take care of them all? Tell me,” he replied.

“Why?”

“Because you should have asked me before. Because as long as I’m here, I want to help you,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Oh, yes. Now, tell me, Charlotte, what do you need?” he said, gazing at her steadily, waiting.

“There’s not enough food. Beans and turnips, that’d be riches. Cornmeal, salt, some dried fruit. Sorghum,” she said as if she were reciting a grocery list, a letter she had not been able to bring herself to write to the Aid Society.

“What else?”

“Cloth. Calico or linsey-woolsey. Quinine. Soap… or at least some lye so we can make out own. A half-dozen needles and some thread. Bandages,” she replied, giddy with it now, unable to keep from imagining it all in a chest, a treasure chest like she’d envisioned the Wise Men bringing when she’d been taught the Bible story, traveling such a long way with such precious cargo. If she had all that—or even half, what could she do with it?

“I’ll get it for you,” he said.

“What’re you talking about? Have you lost your wits?” 

“Not at all. But what you want, it isn’t impossible. It’s who you ask, who you’ve got to talk to,” he said gently.

“Who you’ve got to talk to, Samuel?” she put back to him. He couldn’t mean Bullen, the steward who’d died a few weeks ago and was universally as unlamented as a cholera epidemic.

“The Fosters. I’ll speak to Dr. Foster tomorrow. It may take a few days to get it all, but they will,” he said calmly, as if it were nothing.

“Easy as that?” she snapped.

“Could be. Would have been if you’d spoken to Miz Mary. Maybe she won’t get all of it but some. She doesn’t have to write to the Aid Society, though I venture she will. Dr. Foster’s got money and Miz Mary knows how to spend it. Spend it right. You watch, she’ll get all you want and more, you should get ready for some mathematical textbooks or a cask of molasses, and it’ll be nothing but a grin on Dr. Foster’s face to make it happen, he’s that far gone—not that she’s not a sweet, kindly woman, but he thinks she walks on water. He’ll see it as the smallest favor, seeing as he only got to her in time because I told him to go,” Samuel said. “He’s brilliant but he was nothing but a fool before, risking her and he’s figured it out now. It’s lucky for him she’s not greedy or proud.”

“Why, Sam!” Charlotte couldn’t help crying out in laughter, halfway to tears.

“D’you know, that’s the first time I can recall you calling me Sam,” he said, smiling like it was first thing in the morning and she was better to see than the rising sun. “Kind of like it,” he added, watching her closely in a way that made her warm—and shiver. She felt herself moving closer to him, the space between them becoming alive.

“You do?”

“Yeah. Sounds…friendly,” he said in a lower voice. Seemed he was moving nearer too and she didn’t mind, no, not at all.

“Well, we are, aren’t we? When I think of all you’ve done for me, how thankful I am,” she said, lifting her hand to touch him. His bare forearm perhaps or his shoulder. Or maybe she would have let her hand rest on his cheek, her eyes on his lips. She might have if he hadn’t drawn back at her last words, breaking whatever it was between them in the space of a heartbeat.

“It’s not like that, Charlotte. You don’t owe me anything,” he said evenly.

“Maybe not owe, but I can’t forget what you’ve done, what you do,” she said.

“Friendship’s not a tally. Not a debt. Not for me,” he said. She’d hurt him and hadn’t meant to. She could wish for things to be simple, wouldn’t make them so. She reached her hand out again and took his, the one that had held the scalpel, that he used to rub his eyes when he was tired. She saw he didn’t know what to make of it but she didn’t want him to let go.

“Not for me, either. Sam,” she said, still holding on to him, letting him hold on to her. “If you go, I’ll surely miss you,” she offered. He grasped her hand more tightly, the strength in him controlled, the gentleness unconcealed.

“If? Or when?” he replied. She looked away then, unable to bear the question. To voice an answer.


	2. Chapter 2

Julia knew.

“Does Dr. Foster know?” Julia asked. 

Mary thought of how he had begun to look at her, as if he caught himself wondering and did not dare ask. She thought of how she looked away then, not shy, not shamed but something like both.

“No, I don’t think so. I haven’t told him,” she said.

“Why?” Julia said. Mary paused but it was time to tell the truth. To herself and to Julia, who asked without any demand in her tone, so simply there was nothing to do but answer.

“I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of him?”

“Afraid of myself. Of saying it and knowing I cannot unsay it. I cannot hide from it. It would change everything,” Mary said, holding her hands very still, folded one atop the other. 

“This your first?” Julia said.

“No. But I lost the others,” she replied. Such a very few words for what meant so much. That first sorrow, hopeful in retrospect, and the second, so much worse; the labor a prolonged agony and certain to be futile, too soon for her baby to breathe, too late for her to forget that perfect small face with his dead father’s chin.

“He know that?”

“No,” Mary said, glancing at Julia’s eyes where there was comprehension and kindness.

“An awful lot he don’t know. There’s a difference between what you don’t know and what’s a secret,” Julia said. Miriam began to make a soft smacking sound in her cradle and Mary nodded at Julia, acknowledging the greater call upon her. “Might help to talk to a friend about all this, afore you talk to him.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t burden anyone with my…troubles,” Mary said. Perhaps if she were home, she could speak of it to Caroline; it would not have required so much effort to explain to her sister, the fewest words, a gesture. Her name said with a particular inflection, _Caro_.

“Not a burden if it’s a friend. Not a duty neither,” Julia said, walking over to lift Miriam up and putting the baby on her shoulder, patting the little back in the white dress Mary had made and offered with some apprehension, happy when Julia had smiled, fingering the tatted lace trimming the hem. 

“I think I must see to Dr. Foster now. He’s been closeted in the study with the post for over an hour,” Mary said, walking from the kitchen where Julia was settling herself to nurse the baby, towards the room she and Jedediah shared in the evenings; the fine parlor was saved for her calls and sympathetic teas with Emma or Mrs. Clarence Tyler, informally called Letty, the Vermonter wife of the Union battalion’s commander.

She opened the door and stepped in quietly. She’d learned how to alter her gait so the dragging leg did not announce her arrival every time. She hadn’t her old grace anymore, but she tried not to mind it and certainly her husband was never at a loss for words when it came to praising her. It didn’t make her blush but she couldn’t help laughing sometimes, seeing Gustav’s raised eyebrow within her mind or her mother’s short, wry nod. An affectionate pet-name, _liebe_ Mareike or May, had been nearly the full extent of the compliments she received from those closest to her before her second marriage and Jed only referred to it as “some Yankee affliction” or “a Germanic formality, one can only presume, Molly,” when she told him. He had not been jealous of Gustav or at least not very much, not so much that it taxed him to conceal it, and had simply informed her she must accustom herself to his periodic paeans “you might cultivate the sang-froid of Aphrodite rising from Cythera, sweetheart, as I’ve no intention of stopping.”

It would not be a day for such effusions. Nor had he smuggled in a nosegay of late blue asters. She could read the line of his bent neck, the tension in his shoulders; he had not even taken off his coat before he sat at the desk to open his letters. There had not been many but she had noticed the black border at once, the dramatic slash across the F and the t, and the larger envelope that had been heavy, the return address in Baltimore impersonal, professional. She had left him longer than she meant to, talking to Julia, but she didn’t regret it. Not yet.

“Would you like something to drink? Keturah could make us some tea, I can call her. Unless you’d rather have supper early and talk later,” she said, crossing the room slowly to stand near him.

“No. No, thank you,” he answered. He was still staring at the page held in his hand.

“Jedediah,” she began but was interrupted.

“I don’t want you to wear mourning,” he said flatly.

“Jedediah?” 

“For my mother. This letter, it says she died last week. Pneumonia,” he went on. She moved closer, laid a hand on his shoulder before she spoke. Since their marriage, she had found he was exquisitely sensitive to touch, a need that no relative nor his first wife had ever truly recognized. 

“Oh, my dearest. I’m so very sorry,” she said softly.

“I’m not,” he replied. It was clear he thought she would be shocked, as if she was unfamiliar with grief, her own and others, as if she didn’t know what it cost him to say it or to believe it was true. 

“All right, Jedediah,” she said and that was what made him look up at her sharply, his beautiful dark eyes troubled.

“No challenge? No piety or moral remonstrance? I can hardly fathom it,” he said. Once, it would have been a retort, meant to sting, to distract and derail, an incitement to an angry debate. She let her hand stroke down his shoulder and then brought it back to rest where she’d started.

“Grief is hard to fathom. And I don’t know very much about your mother, but I know there was an…estrangement between you. That she said things it must be hard to forget, harder to remember,” she replied. She recalled when his mother had brought his brother to Mansion House, the spiteful condemnation she’d hurled at Jed and how obvious his hurt had been to anyone who bothered to look. He hadn’t said much about his last visit to the family home before he came to Boston, only that he had had a woman sent from the plantation to wait for them in Alexandria. He’d explained about Julia and Miriam in the carriage from the train, a brief history of cruelty and salvation, and he had then left the management of the household, and Julia, entirely to her. Mary hadn’t liked his mother but the woman had had a hand in creating the man she loved, his gifts and his flaws; in death, if not in life, she’d have to make her peace with the elder Mrs. Foster. Patience was called for, always with Jedediah, but more so now and if it was not a talent she had by birth, it was one she had studied as she had her needlework, a woman’s necessity.

“She said terrible things—to me mostly. So often I became accustomed to it. I used to simply resent her, but now, I think she must have been a monster, for what she did to Julia. There were others too, I’m sure. And yet, I know she loved me, her own sort of love. She’s gone and she never even answered my letter about our marriage,” he said, the sentences jumbled together. Mary sighed. It would be a travail for him to grieve for his mother, but he must, for he’d loved her and she was gone; the same hand that had signed away her grandchild had ruffled his hair once.

“They’ve already held the funeral?” she said, hoping it was true. It would not be a service that could hold any healing for him and the journey would be exhausting for them both.

“Yes. That’s done. She’s buried next to my father in the family plot, just as she always said she wanted. We are spared that, at least,” he said. There was a silence between them with a distance she found unfamiliar. Perhaps there was more he must tell her…perhaps it was her own knowledge and how she felt the moment to share it had receded even further with the day’s news.

“There was a second envelope,” Mary said after the passage of long minutes, time where the clock’s hand almost refused to proceed.

“Yes. From the family lawyer in Baltimore. It has to do with my inheritance,” he replied. 

“Oh,” she said, for he must have some acknowledgement, but beyond that, she didn’t know what to say. What would it mean to accept as their own the wealth borne of immense suffering? She was his wife now; they were as one but there had not been a test of their differences that was so daunting since he’d let her go at the Alexandria dock. An Abolitionist and a slave-owner—how could they pull in tandem?

“I know you don’t want it,” he said.

_How could I?_ she thought of saying. Or _Do you still? How can you still?_ When she first met him, she might have said any of it, without weighing the words first, but he had only been an attractive, provocative stranger then, not her friend, her lover, the dearest companion of her heart, without whom she had not wanted to survive her illness. 

“I don’t,” she said simply. 

She could not imagine even spending a penny tainted with the blood of the slaves the Fosters kept. Jedediah had a salary from the Army and she had what Gustav had left her; it was enough to live on, if not luxuriously, then pleasantly, without the pinch of poverty. She would have welcomed penury before she ever accepted the cost of a human soul.

“I don’t want what they’re offering either,” he replied.

“Which is what, exactly?” 

“Half of it all—the land and the holdings, the bonds, the slaves. I don’t want that, I don’t want the look on your face if you thought I did,” he explained. He’d turned to face her and the fading light through the lace curtains picked out the undeniable grey at his temples. “I thought of writing Ezra to ask him to buy out my share, but I’m afraid he’ll sell off some of our people while he’s still able to; I can’t take that risk. I don’t know what he’s planning, what advice he is getting. I thought I’d better stay part owner to act as a brake on him, don’t you see? After the War, we’ll have to come to a decision, but as much as I want to, I can’t walk away.”

“I understand. I don’t understand your brother, but you know him better. I can’t imagine he’d be eager to send you any income now but if he does, I won’t touch it,” she replied.

“You might give it to Miss Jenkins. She’s always got some project that could use some extra greenbacks and Boston’s a long way off,” Jed said, nearly smiling. Mary was so relieved, she didn’t think to brace herself for anything else he’d say.

“There’s something else I want to do. Find Julia’s boy,” he said.

“What?”

“The lawyer sent a list of inventory and he’s on it. They named him Hadrian, my father always used Latin names and my mother and Ezra evidently kept it up. I’m sure that’s not what Julia called him. They sold him down to Louisiana, it’s all there in the ledger,” he said.

“What do you mean to do?” she asked. Her bad leg was starting to ache and she felt the weakness which might precede the nausea, like the light’s jaundice before a coming storm.

“What I said, find him—and bring him back home. I’ve seen Julia, Miss Marcus, with Miriam—I can’t think how it must feel to lose a child,” he said. She felt his words, his direct, sympathetic gaze as a blow and nearly stumbled. To lose a child…

“Sit down, Mary! Let me help you,” he said quickly, out of his chair and with a hand at her waist, guiding her to the armchair she preferred, kneeling beside her.

“Something else is ailing you, sweetheart?”

“No!” she blurted. “No, thank you, no—only, do you mean to seek the child yourself?” she asked.

“Yes.” He sounded serious, as if he had not proposed a plan less likely than a trip to the Moon.

“How can you consider it? How can you leave when I need—you are needed so much here,” she cried, stumbling over the words, trying to find a way to make her objection sound only rational and just.

“Why, Mary, I thought you’d be pleased!”

“Pleased that you would abandon your duty? To the soldiers, the hospital?” _To me_ , her heart cried, _again, you would leave me behind_ , but she kept herself from saying it. 

“What about the boy? He’s my flesh and blood, a child. There’s no one else who can do it, no one with the reason and the justification. You’re an Abolitionist, Mary—how can I let that little boy remain a slave, now that I have a chance to bring him back to his mother?”

“Do you? Have a chance? Or is this a fool’s errand, to take you away from where you are needed most, an impossible quest whose goal you may never reach? How can a Union officer cross the line, an enemy of the Confederacy? You’ll be captured, killed-- it’s insane!” she argued, hardly believing what she said, that it was she who said it; telling him to leave the child a slave, reminding him of the dangers he would once have enumerated to her if she’d proposed the journey. He looked at her steadily, his dark eyes considering. He reached over the took her hand in his, the hand that wore his ring.

“War is insanity, Mary. The whole world has lost any pretense to reason. But tell me, there’s something else—something else that is troubling you, most grievously, or else you would be pointing out every flaw in my plan with your calm logic and helping me devise something more likely to succeed. Dear Molly, tell me what it is,” he said.

She could not tell him now. She could not bear this to be the moment when he found out—what she hoped for, what she feared, why she feared. He had just lost his mother and they had argued, a perplexing argument where he spoke in her voice and she in his. She did not want him to know her weakness, how much she still suffered—how the pregnancy taxed her and her ruined leg, how she woke in the night afraid she was alone, that she was on another boat, being carried from him or that he had walked away from the dock, without a word. They had been growing closer every day, in strength of affection, in binding trust; she knew the baby had been conceived when she told him after weeks of the most gentle love-making that she had had enough comfort in his arms and wanted only ecstasy. She had watched his eyes grow darker, felt his confident touch exhilarating, cherishing, transfiguring them both. She could not risk losing what was between them and she told herself it was not a secret, only what he did not know. He was too intelligent, too tenacious to be put off entirely; she must say something that resembled the truth.

“I have lost one dearly loved husband already. I cannot bear to consider it again, as selfish as that makes me. As much a hypocrite as I must be to say it, my fear more pressing than justice,” she said. Matron had said something once about the best lie being baked in the truth and Mary thought she’d done it, convinced Jed, who squeezed her hand after she spoke and then her knee through her skirt.

“Not a hypocrite, Mary. My wife. My family,” he said. “I cannot promise you I won’t search for Hadrian, but I promise I won’t leave you. I promise to tell you the truth, always.”

It was fortunate he didn’t seem to want a response. She had none.


	3. Chapter 3

"Why hasn't this man been moved?" Byron asked.

"Not now, I'm busy," Anne replied, carefully adjusting the dressing on Private Stephens's chest She'd thanked her lucky stars Foster had operated on the boy, giving him a chance at survival that she knew Byron could not have managed. 

"Yes, now, Nurse Hastings," Byron said, raising his voice just a little. She liked that sometimes but not at the moment. When she finished with Stephens, there were several other men who needed to be seen to and it was all left to her. It was hard to admit, but losing both Emma Green and Mary Foster as regular nurses had left her scrambling more often than she expected, despite the diligent service of the nuns.

"Byron, hush. I've not the time nor the inclination," she snapped.

"God damn it, neither is required of you, Nurse Hastings, only your attention to your superior! Your full attention. You shall address me as Dr. Hale or Captain Hale, take your pick, and then you will explain to me exactly why you have not followed my direct instruction, my direct order to move this man out of this ward," Byron shouted. He'd gone pale and not flushed, not the ugly red she knew she'd turned; she was aware the patients in the beds were all listening avidly and Mr. Hopkins was leafing through his Bible as if the date of the end of the War was hidden in the pages.

"How dare you!" she cried out, unable to stop herself.

"I do not dare anything at all. I am the second in command here. My word should be as your law," he replied pompously. 

The hell of it was she could hardly argue with him, having taken Nurse Mary to task for not following protocol on more than one occasion, more eagerly if there was someone else present to witness her scathing condemnation. Now she seethed and found herself wishing Mary stood beside her or a few steps back, her presence a bulwark, her crisp voice ready to be raised in solidarity. 

"Your word," she repeated, imbuing it with all the bitter spite she felt in her belly, running through her veins. It was an exhalation of her very soul, a curse only she could perceive, and it kept her hands from trembling as she turned to the stuporous patient Byron was fixated on.

"Just so, madam. Just so," he replied, nodding as if he were sage. Appeased and self-satisfied, once again stroking those ginger whiskers. 

He was oblivious, she had known that and she would continue to know it, but something had hardened in her with this encounter. Or rather, something tenuous had fallen away, the last shriveled leaf on the tree, a change complete and incontestable. As she worked the sheet around the patient's bandaged legs, she thought of where her own feet would take her next. To her room, the door barred, to the desk where the letters waited to be answered. She would make sure her acceptance was not fulsome nor her offer too lofty. She would write the aspiring nurse first, praising the woman's admirable desire to serve and keeping Nurse Mary's in mind, she would paint a picture of Mansion House that was irresistible to another Yankee idealist. Let Byron think he was her master; she would be the mistress of her own fate and many others, even his, even if he could not see it.

> _"My dear Miss Alcott,_
> 
> _I was very much impressed by your ardent entreaty for a nursing position in Alexandria and I appreciate your disappointment and dismay at learning that you would not be able to serve at the Union Hospital in Georgetown. I am pleased to be able to offer you a position here, under my expert supervision as deputized by the esteemed Miss Dix…"_


	4. Chapter 4

"You needn't pose like that, Emma. You look a fright. It's a blessing there isn't a man to see you." Alice's voice rang out like a bell, a sharp siren meant to rouse Emma from slumber or complacency. Both were foreign to her now, returned to her family home. If she must call it that.

Emma sat at the dining room table, her head in her hands. The mahogany was in need of a good polish. Emma was in need of a proper cup of coffee, liberally doctored with cream and sugar, but there was no beeswax for the table, coffee for the pot, and no Belinda. The best Emma could do was to keep gazing out the window, daydreaming about the future. She had looked down at first but the dark wood had been a shadowy looking-glass, altering her memories so that Frank was more clearly the craven enemy he'd become and there were signs everywhere of the ordinary horrors she'd blithely looked past before she went to nurse at Mansion House. The window was dusty and the rich draperies faded by the sun, but it was a solid square of light, like a promise. She had been trying to sort through her thoughts until Alice interrupted her. 

"I have better things to worry about than my appearance, Alice," she snapped. 

She'd been called home to help with her mother but after weeks of dedicated nursing, Emma could see only the most minimal improvement. The doctor visited every few days but he said hardly anything of substance; she wished she could ask Dr. Foster, even Dr. Hale or Nurse Hastings, to examine her mother but she knew their duty lay in treating wounded soldiers, not a middle-aged woman who'd been misusing laudanum. Emma was not certain that was all it was, but there was no denying the frequency with which her mother begged for the bottle, trying to wheedle a few drops into a cup of what was passing for tea. She was afflicted with painful spasms, retching, barely able to walk to the water closet with assistance; her dark hair was lank and her complexion papery and yellow. Emma dosed her with sassafras, made cups of chamomile and mint tea, and tried to coax her to finish a bowl of soup or day-old bread soaked in milk for her supper but more often than not, her mother only turned her face towards the wall, muttering about Belinda or Jimmy.

"Well, it shows. And you ought to, if you don't want to end up a spinster," Alice said calmly, clearly enjoying every spiteful word.

_A spinster_. Would it come to that? Once, she would have laughed to hear it, the idea that the belle of Alexandria, Emma Green of the perpetually full dance card, three suitors deep at any garden party or charity ball, could end up alone, the unmarried daughter caring for aging parents. A shadowy figure or a sour one, of little consequence even to her closest relatives. Yet she could not imagine Frank's return and she could not imagine receiving him, let alone becoming his wife if he did. There was a fundamental divide between them now that no invocation of their past or any compelling touch to her throat or her waist could dispel. She knew now to measure a man by what he'd sacrifice and what he'd make a sacrifice for; Frank repulsed her in both dimensions. As for Henry Hopkins…for all that it seemed their affections would only grow, slowly perhaps but in undeniable strength and resilience, she had seen and heard little of him since the day she'd left Mansion House. 

He had been tender at their parting, holding her hand longer than she might have expected; his blue eyes had held the fervor of his emotion, as at Ayre's farm, but it had been banked, rendered appropriate for the front hall at the hospital, where anyone might walk by. He had not argued with her when she said she must go to her mother, only nodded and then said he hoped her nursing would prove as helpful at home as with the soldiers, so she might return sooner than expected.

"I don't know if I'll be able to come back," she'd said, already worrying about another dispute, her mother restored to health, her father imploring. She had fled in a tempest, it seemed, but without the gale behind her, she was not sure she would succeed a second time. Her reputation would be in tatters and there was no guarantee her family would take her back after the War ended. Henry had said he wanted her, would wait, but she was more canny about promises now-and more fearful of saying them aloud.

"It will work out, Emma. Trust in God-He won't forsake you and neither will I," he had replied. It was so perfectly Henry, tears had filled her eyes as she'd smiled, all the farewell she could muster. She'd been confident first-in her nursing and in Henry's assurance but the days had passed without any further sign of her mother's recovery, nor any token that meant Henry remained devoted and concerned.

She had visited the hospital yesterday, stealing an hour from her mother's bedside; she'd brought a basket of passable applesauce cookies to share and had not wasted a minute pinching her cheeks or retying her sash. It had been an odd feeling to walk through the front door of Mansion House, a stranger again yet welcomed back in the smallest of ways. A nun had nodded to her and not stopped to ask her what she wanted. Little Isaac Watts, Mary's pet and now Belinda's errand boy, had cast such a beseeching eye at her basket she'd flicked back the cloth covering the sweets and let him take a cookie before he ran off, his usual hallooing muffled by a mouthful of crumbs. She'd walked through the wards, running out of cookies sooner than she had expected, pretending to herself that she was not looking all the time for Henry and had tried to enjoy the chivvying the healthier men had undertaken. 

She'd caught sight of Mary and Dr. Foster at the far end of the ward; the distance could not disguise the deep affection between them, the way Dr. Foster laid a hand lightly on his wife's shoulder as she sat beside a boy who was clearly very sick. Both were intent on their patient, but Emma could see how much more patient Dr. Foster was with Mary beside him and how Mary, still pale from her long illness and longer convalescence, was strengthened by her husband's touch, how each trusted the other. The boy, who had been restless, grew very quiet and Mary glanced up at Dr. Foster; Emma thought they could have been alone in their bedroom for the unconcealed tender worry in Mary's face, the gentle reassurance in Dr. Foster's. Emma had turned away suddenly, unable to regard a moment as intimate as an embrace, unable to admit how she longed for something similar.

She'd happened upon Henry almost by accident it seemed and she could not construe the expression in his eyes when he looked at her. There was a certain abstraction she recalled but something else was there, an unfamiliar darkness she found herself fearing. They had exchanged pleasantries, Emma hoping some anodyne word of greeting would return them to their previous connection. They were nearly alone, in an alcove off the long front hall. Emma had not been able to convince herself there was something, some noise or distraction that was impeding them. It was with a growing sense of desperation that she'd confided,

"Being home, it is harder than I thought, Henry. I feel…that I'm failing, my mother is no better and to be away from here, from you…I find myself praying there will be some reason for me to come back to Mansion House, a call I cannot refuse," the words tumbled out, bold, unladylike. Unsought? She risked a glance to his face and saw it unchanged, a stone face Matron had sometimes said laughingly but accurate as she always was. Where was the man who had pledged himself to her? To wait, to remains hers in devotion? A stranger might have been more generous of himself than he was, unsmiling and remote. 

"You are doing your duty, admirably I'm sure. God asks of us what He needs, not what we want, Emma. I've learned, I've learned how I must submit to His commands, not my own impulses," he'd said evenly. There had been a catch in his voice, she'd been sure of it, but she hadn't been able to tell what it meant. She couldn't think what to say back, she wished for any interruption to give her a respite from her wretchedness at revealing herself and being politely rebuffed. None was forthcoming; she'd found herself speaking before she knew it.

"The Fosters seem so happy, I saw them together at a patient's bedside just now. Dr. Foster especially, Nurse Mary has always had a cheerful disposition, but he had been so dour, so brusque before and now, he has such a different expression. He looks so kindly now, compassionate," she'd said.

"He loves her very much," Henry had replied simply, as if it explained everything. As if the words were not a dagger in her very heart.

"I suppose he must," she'd said, to say something. "I suppose I must go home now," she'd added. Waiting to hear if he would finally say something to console her, to remind her of what she meant to him. 

"Yes, Emma. That's where you ought to be. Where you are needed," he had said. He hadn't reached out to touch her hand, to brush back the loose strands of hair from her face, her chignon less secure with only her two unpracticed hands to arrange it. She had already been too forward, the entire trip a pretext to see him, which he must have guessed. He must have reconsidered what he'd said before she went, her absence a relief instead of a burden. Perhaps the Fosters had shown him what true love was and their own prior affection realized as only his infatuation, a deceiving dream of rescuing a damsel, of converting a heathen to his preferred faith. She wouldn't know-she would not seek him out again.

Alice had said she might end up a spinster. She'd spat out the words to hurt Emma, but there was nothing to disprove her, not now. It seemed, not ever. Emma thought of Mary's instructions, of how to be a woman and not a child.

"Perhaps you're right, Alice. About me," she said softly. She was pleased her voice was steady at least. 

"How things have changed, Emma Adelaide Green can't keep a beau, Reb or Yankee!" Alice crowed. Her blue eyes were narrow but her dimples flashed, her lips curved in a delighted smile. Emma was sure some man would find her adorable.


	5. Chapter 5

Henry found her sitting by the bedside of a boy from New York, a dark-haired lad with his face half-covered with bandages. Jed had been able to save the boy's life, but not his right eye, nor his right hand, and he'd be sure to be invalided out as soon as he was well enough to be sent home or his family mustered the money to come to Alexandria to fetch him. John, his name was, but he went by Jacky, called so by the other men with a certain wry fondness; he'd been a general favorite it seemed, though there'd been nothing very remarkable to recommend him after his injury; to Henry, he was only another soldier, lice-ridden, plaintive and demanding in turn, another sheep in the flock, a name to recite in the list he brought to God every night. Matron did not appear to feel the same.

"Oh, and it's time for ye to wake up now, boyo, for this soup shan't go to waste and ye need it to build yer strength back up," Matron crooned, her rough voice softer than Henry could remember hearing, her accent more pronounced.

"Yer mam can't wait all the day long, Declan! I've other work to see to, this place won't run itself and with no Steward…" her voice trailed off, an odd note in it, one Henry could not place.

"Matron?"

She was all in black, as she had been for months now, unrelieved by anything except her stained apron; even on Sunday, her lace collar and cuffs were black and the rosary in her hand jet. Grey hair escaped her bun and her eyes had a blankness to them that was rarely missing; when she sat down with Mary Foster, she regained some of her former sharpness, tempered by her clear affection for the younger woman, and Nurse Hastings could rouse her into a state of high dudgeon that was also one of highly effective action, but between and betwixt, as Henry's mother would have said, she was another woman altogether, a stranger.

"Matron?" he repeated.

"Yes, Chaplain? What is it?" she answered, the familiar touch of asperity in her tone a comfort.

"There are some matters I need to discuss with you, household affairs if you will," he said. Henry had not trained for such conversation in seminary at Union, those long afternoons of debate over three in one, one in three, one alone, supreme-- the leafy trees perfectly at ease with the crenellated towers, Roberts and Clavell perching on the balustrade, books scattered, splayed open, theory and faith filling the air like the petrichor of a rainy day…

"What do ye mean? I'm busy with me boy," she snapped, leaning over to straighten the neat blanket covering Jacky, who hadn't moved, hadn't opened his good eye.

"Busy?" he blurted. She sat back on her chair, clearly willing to outwait him. That hadn't changed.

"They say, those with eyes to see…Declan needs me. What d'ye want, then?" she asked.

"Well, that is, the men are complaining about the food. There's not enough, we're short on bread, beans. I don't see how they can recover if we cannot feed them," he explained. "Mrs. Foster has been helping with baskets, I know, but she cannot take the place of the Union Army from her own pantry. I thought you would know what to do. What we did before."

_Declan_? He had continued on as he'd intended, the discussion about the provisions being an essential one, but he'd been taken aback that she referred to Jacky by the name of her dead son, rumored to be a deserter who'd met an ignominious end. Henry remembered the man, a bluff hearty type who'd had an eye for Nurse Hastings and a word for every man; Private John Hammond resembled him hardly at all. And here was Matron calling him by her son's name, talking to him as a doting mother…

"That's Steward's job," she said curtly.

"I understand, but we have no Steward since Mr. Bullen's passing," Henry said. 

He wasn't missed, Steward Bullen, who'd been found dead in his chair these weeks past, but without any steward, the hospital was floundering. Henry had spoken about it to Jed, who had listened seriously and dashed off a letter to Washington City, and then said they'd have to make do while they waited. Mary had appreciated the dilemma at once and had been bringing baskets of preserves, sacks of beans, even a precious canister of real tea, but she knew it was not nearly enough. They needed someone to make sure the kitchen was properly stocked, the stores inventoried and used before they were wasted. Belinda Gibson was an excellent cook, but as she said, she couldn't make a meal from air and wishes taste like much of anything. There was no one left at Mansion House with Matron's experience, her longevity and her keen eye; Mary and Jed had agreed that asking her to assist was the most reasonable course of action. And now, Henry was left wondering if they had been right. And what was wrong.

"I can't see how I can help. I'm the Matron, not the Steward, I've my own work to attend to, my own to tend," she said, her eyes returning to Jacky's still form.

"I thought, you would know where Steward got the supplies he did. Who to ask, what it will require," Henry said carefully. 

"Not bloody likely! The man was a devil, a veritable beast, and I'm a good Christian woman. I'd never-- You'll need to look elsewhere for yer help, that's all," she replied, softening her voice when its stridency seemed to unsettle the boy.

"I c'n help, Mister," Isaac Watts interjected, having appeared at Henry's side without his notice. He'd filled out a little as a result of Mary and Belinda's care and Belinda had taken to using him as an errand boy. He was quick and quiet when he needed to be, apt to whistle when he could, with an endless hunger for biscuits.

"That's the Chaplain, boy. Mind yer manners!" Matron said.

"It's all right, Matron. Isaac, I do appreciate your offer but I don't see how you could," Henry replied. He was a bright boy, but a child and Henry knew what he'd been asking for was black market goods, possibly trading with the enemy.

"I work for Miz Belinda," Isaac announced, as if that was explanation enough.

"Yes, I know, but this isn't a matter of fetching an extra sack of flour from the mercantile," Henry said. Matron nodded, though he couldn't be sure it was in response to his statement or at Jacky's ongoing, regular breathing.

"Beg pardon, sir, but it's more'n that. Miz Belinda, she got her own business going. She makes all sorts of things people like and they, well, some of 'em play pretty well for it. She needs supplies, meal and flour, soda, eggs if I c'n get 'em-and I do. I know how," Isaac said. 

Henry took in how much taller the boy had gotten, his wiry strength, the clever, cautious, appraising look in his eyes that Henry realized had somehow, subtly, become his default. Mary wouldn't like it, but what choice did they have? The men had to eat, Jed's letter would take weeks to get a reply, if one was to be had; there were no applicants for the Steward's position that Jed was prepared to hire and Matron…not only was she unwilling to help, but it seemed that she would might need assistance of her own. Henry thought he'd have to have a very delicate conversation with Mary Foster, that it would take all the skill he'd honed in his training to maneuver through the philosophical and practical difficulties of asking her to watch the older woman for madness, to ask for whatever her larder could spare without telling her he'd put the boy she wanted to rescue at risk. Clavell would have known how to say it, Clavell who'd been killed with his battalion at Antietam. He had a fleeting image of Emma's sweet face, her lips pursed in concentration and wondered if she would have surprised him with wisdom or anger at what he proposed to do. She was struggling with her own responsibilities and he was glad, for a moment, that he could not burden her more.

"All right, Isaac. Seems now you work for me as well," Henry said, vowing to himself protect the boy however he could.

"He'll look after you, boy. You can trust the chaplain," Matron volunteered. She looked alert as she hadn't earlier and her dark eyes flickered with something, the comprehension of a peer.


	6. Chapter 6

It was Friday before Henry came. On Tuesday, Matron had offered him a dented flask with a wordless sound, clearly undisturbed when he shook his head, tucking the bottle back in her pocket; her eyes had held an expression that was both blank and comprehending, more of the latter thankfully, and without any critical judgment. Once, she might have patted his arm as she walked away, her worn hand the briefest tenderness. Now she, like everyone else, assumed he had his fill of affection.

"Jed?"

Henry stood in his half-open doorway, a careful deference in his bearing, despite his soiled linen and the shadow on his cheeks. Jed waved him in. Henry was too good a friend to dismiss and their conversation should not be overheard by anyone; Jed had learned that it was crucial for the chief medical officer and chaplain to seem undisturbed by any calamity for the hospital to continue on. Mary had clapped her hands together when he'd told her so, her bright smile all the approval he'd needed, wanted and had not admitted to wanting.

"Jed, if I might-you seem a bit…haggard," Henry said. Jed rubbed at his eyes, wishing he had brought his spectacles with him as Mary had suggested. There had been three surgeries and a half-dozen letters to write. He knew he no longer carried his years effortlessly, his dark hair greyed since Mary's illness, but for Henry to comment…He shrugged, a gesture to acknowledge the younger man and allow him to go on.

"I wondered if there was some spiritual need, some crisis, I could help with," Henry said, almost apologetically. "Something that Nurse Mary, that is, Mrs. Foster cannot console you about."

"You can just call her Mary, Henry. The sky won't fall," Jed replied. Henry sometimes seemed the youngest person Jed had ever met and sometimes, he had the wisdom of the ages-or the steady silence that was what wisdom called for.

"Since your marriage, you've been so much happier. It's clear to me, to everyone, what a fundamental affinity you share," Henry went on. Jed knew he was thinking as much of Emma Green as he spoke as Mary; Henry said little about the Dixie nurse's departure, but what he did say was enough and his expression when she was mentioned spoke volumes. He was sometimes tempted to invoke Emma to see Henry's response but Mary had once said, "Oh, don't tease! He feels it so" when he'd mentioned it and there'd been nothing to do but kiss her pretty mouth until they'd both forgotten Henry, Emma, Mansion House and the War. A fundamental affinity, Henry had said, and there was a truth there that was undeniable-if it was not entire.

"I thought perhaps it was something Mary could not help you with-and what could that be, other than a spiritual crisis?" Henry said plainly but gently, as if he were certain he'd hit upon it but did not want to overwhelm Jed with his insight; Jed had used the same tone in making a particularly difficult diagnosis and he knew how Henry would be watching him to see how he'd taken it. Jed closed his eyes and considered.

 _Something Mary could not help you with_ Henry had said and he was right. But also wrong, because the problem was not spiritual, not in the way Henry meant; the problem was Mary. For a week, night after night, she'd woken him with her dreams. With her dreams and what they told him.

She had only called for him the first night; he could not say it was a blessing. He had thought it would be simple to calm her when he was startled out of sleep by the sound of her voice crying for him _Jedediah oh Jedediah won't you won't you come?_ There had been a frantic energy in the words and a fearful desperation that made her usually steady contralto tremble. He'd taken her in his arms immediately, stroking her cheeks, discovering her tears and tasting them as he kissed her softly. He had thought that would be all that was needed, an uncomplicated consolation, the physical reminder that he was near; he'd thought she might be abashed when she opened her eyes or would apologize and make light of it _just a bad dream, how silly!_ He'd cajoled _Come on, sweetheart, it's all right_ but her dark eyes had been full of an arresting sorrow when she looked at him and the hand she put around his neck clung to him without the passion or affection he'd known from her since they'd wed. She had said few words about her nightmare _the dock the boat all alone_ and he'd apologized and promised in equal measure _never leave you again Molly_. She'd fallen back to sleep while he lay awake for an hour or more, remembering what he'd done and what he hadn't.

In the morning, she had been the Mary he knew better and had thanked him, making a little apology for being a bother. He hadn't made the gallant quip she expected, but had held her close and kissed her until her response was ardent and the night seemed a thousand years ago. He'd thought all was well until she woke him again the next night, her cries wordless, her chestnut hair wet with tears when he went to push it back from her face. She said less when he was finally able to soothe her to speak, only _you never came_ and he'd known not to argue too forcefully that he had at last, before it was too late. It had been late enough.

It had gone on all week, every night broken by a nightmare that woke him right away and that she struggled longer each time to throw off. She wept every time, sometimes bitterly, sometimes nearly breathless, hopeless, abandoned to her despair. She said little but he was reputed the best diagnostician of his year in Paris as well as Baltimore for good reason; he quickly grew to understand she'd suffered far more than he'd imagined during her illness, the cruel and hasty explusion McBurney had engineered, the weeks she'd declined in Boston, poisoned by her doctor's over-reliance on calomel. By his own selfish absence that had made her write a letter she'd expected him to read when she was dead, never having been told she was beloved. He had had hours to consider her after she fell back into a more restful sleep and he was unable; how often she had sat up with a boy on a ward, dozing in a straight-backed chair, some little book in her apron pocket. He'd sometimes heard her singing or humming a tune he also could not recall the lyrics for, a snatch of music from the nursery. He thought of how she'd sat beside him when he had suffered through his withdrawal, encouraging or silent as he'd seemed to need it, her hand on his forehead when he shivered or burned. Always her voice in the shadows. He had never doubted she would answer him.

Last night, she had offered to sleep in the spare room, in a camp bed set up by the window. _You need your sleep_ she'd said simply and he'd shaken his head, beckoning her to come sit beside him. He'd spoken to her of the train ride to Boston, how he'd looked out the sooty window and imagined his soul was a falcon that could fly to her, how he had not been able to concentrate on the book he'd brought but had found his mind filled with fragments of poems. _Tell me_ she had said and he'd paused to remember the sound of the carriage on the track, the scent of cinders, how he'd envisioned her face after their first kiss, when she had looked up at him and he'd known he could never love another woman. _Tell me_ she'd repeated and he'd recited _Love these mix'd souls doth mix again/ And makes both one, each this and that_ and she'd sighed. They'd slept almost until dawn before she woke him, shaking with sobs in his arms as he'd whispered over and over _I'm sorry I love you I'm here_. She had been the one to turn then to face him, to stop his lips with her own, to move his hands to her hips. Her voice had been husky after they'd finished, when she'd said _I don't know why they come now_ , her thighs still pressed against his, her lips against his throat. 

"You said I seem happier," he said to Henry who'd been waiting for an answer, longer than he should have needed to.

"Yes, I did. We can all see it," Henry replied.

"What about Mary? Do you think she is happier, married to me?" Jed asked. At first, he'd been sure but these past weeks, there had been silences and a sort of veil she seemed to draw over herself and now her tormented dreams all made him doubt. He loved her so dearly he had assumed she felt the same in all regards but now he must question everything.

"Yes," Henry said promptly, a hint of bemused laughter in his voice at an inquiry he must feel had an obvious answer. He was young but he was a good chaplain and he watched Jed to see the impact of his response.

"This is the trouble then? That you fear Mary is unhappy?" Henry said carefully. It was a reasonable distillation of Jed's suffering, beyond the fatigue and the ache of carrying it; Henry could not know how Jed worried he'd caused her unhappiness in ways that he could never repair. 

"Jed, I don't think it's that Mary is happier now-it's that she is finally herself. We may all see it…there's a light in her eyes, she's contented," Henry explained.

"Contented? It doesn't sound like much," Jed replied.

"I beg your pardon, I was trying to find a polite way to express it-she's loved and she loves you in return, so much a blind man could see it," Henry said. 

"A blind man, eh? Well, I have been blind," Jed replied, feeling the burden of the sleepless nights, the anxiety and guilt he now shouldered. There were confessions he couldn't make, even to a generous pastor.

"Jed, why don't you talk to her? She's wiser than the two of us put together, I'd hazard, and I think she's more forgiving to you than you are yourself," Henry suggested.

"I've tried that, it doesn't seem to help," Jed muttered. 

In the night and over the breakfast table, when they sat down for dinner and sat together in their sitting room. He'd even tried murmuring apologia while she slept, using every endearment that he might have shied from in the daylight. The moon, he found, was not as harsh a judge. _My darling_ he'd whispered _my dearest my rose of all the world_ … and still she'd wept with her eyes shut and when she opened them.

"Then listen," Henry replied. 

It occurred to Jed, not for the first time, what a very fine chaplain Henry Hopkins was. And a friend. Jed glanced down at the papers on his desk. There was nothing that could not wait until tomorrow and he saw the encouragement in Henry's eyes and a little envy, that Jed might go to the woman he loved where Henry could not. 

It was time to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6 is a "deleted scene" as if this is the DVD edition of Season 3 that never was. The poem Jed quotes is by none other than my all-time favorite, John Donne.


	7. Chapter 7

"You haven't made it right, you silly girl! How can you expect me to eat this mess?" Emma's mother exclaimed, letting the silver fork fall back down on the plate so roughly Emma thought the china itself might shatter. She almost wished it would, a thousand shards strewn over the bare floor, something utterly destroyed; the anger within her yearned for such an expression but instead she schooled her face to a placid serenity.

"I'm sorry, Mamma," she said. It had seemed to be one of her mother's better days. Jane had been able to sit up in bed, have her hair combed out and re-braided, had even read a letter from a friend in Richmond. Emma had thought to tempt her to eat more than the vegetable broth and mint tea, had spent all morning preparing the farina cake. It had sounded simple enough when Belinda mentioned it but as with so many domestic endeavors, the execution had proved infinitely harder. And now it also seemed Emma's assessment of her mother's mood had been a failure as well.

"Why don't you get Belinda to make it?" her mother asked. Emma sighed. No matter how many times they'd had the conversation since her own return, her mother seemed unable to grasp the change in Belinda's circumstances.

"Mamma, Belinda only works for us a few hours a week now. She's at the hospital, cooking for the soldiers, and she's her own family to care for," Emma explained. She imagined Belinda would nod approvingly at her for keeping her tone gentle even as she chuckled at the fiasco of the dessert, lacking even a custard sauce to disguise its deficits.

"Yankees, she's taking care of, instead of us!" Emma's mother said bitterly.

"And Confederates, our own boys, Mamma. And her husband," Emma replied. The husband she'd been kept from for too long, a whole lifetime. 

"She should never have left us! Left me alone, abandoned, sick unto dying," her mother complained. 

"You're not alone, Mamma. I'm right here," Emma said. She didn't mention Alice, who spent as little time in the sickroom as possible, nor her father, who came in and stared at his wife, stared out the window, who'd hardly spoken two words to Emma since she'd come home in response to his brief letter. Jimmy hadn't been home in weeks and Emma could only count it a blessing.

"You-- I want Belinda," Jane muttered. 

It did not hurt as much now to hear her say it as it had the first time, shortly after her arrival. Or in the long nights of lonely nursing, when her mother whimpered or moaned, her suffering contagious, irreparable. Emma missed Mansion House for so many reasons, for its tall, solemn chaplain who held her heart in his hands and its determined, compassionate Head Nurse, for dogged Dr. Hale and brilliant, volatile Dr. Foster and officious, efficient Nurse Hastings, but sometimes, she missed it most for its perpetual tumult, the steady murmur of some other voice, some other person she could call out to for help, even of the smallest kind. She had thought, coming home, that her parents' house would still be that to her but she'd been wrong. Mansion House was home and she feared she might never return. Might never be called back.

"She's not here, Mamma. Shall I bring you something else? There's a little biscuit left," Emma said.

"No, I don't want it. Don't want anything, leave me be," Jane snapped, pushing the tray that held the offered sweet away as roughly as she could; the weakness of her illness kept it from crashing to the floor. She turned her sallow face to the wall and closed her eyes. 

"All right. I'll just look in on you later," Emma offered, not waiting for her mother to mumble another rejection. 

She picked up the tray and walked from the room, wishing with all her heart there would be someone coming up the stairs to take the tray from her hands-Henry smiling down at her shyly, Mary with her lips quirked in an amused smile at the sadly lumpen cake, even Dr. Hale with his grandiose unnecessary courtesy. The hallway was dim, but not dark enough that she couldn't see the truth: she was alone and there was no one coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second deleted scene, this time with Emma and her mother and a period authentic farina cake.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my second "episode" for Season 3 That Never Was, made up of a few scenes. The title is from Emily Dickinson. I have done my best to make sure the medicine is historically accurate and plausible, if not factual.


End file.
